


Canticle of the Herald

by LadyGoat



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-29
Packaged: 2018-03-03 08:28:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2844575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyGoat/pseuds/LadyGoat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every story, tale or memoir<br/>Every saga or romance<br/>Whether true or fabricated<br/>Whether planned or happenstance</p><p>Whether sweeping through the ages<br/>Casting centuries aside<br/>Or a hurried brief recital<br/>Just a thirty-minute ride</p><p>Whether bright or melancholy<br/>Rough and ready, finely spun<br/>Whether with a thousand players<br/>Or a lonely cast of one</p><p>Every story, new or ancient<br/>Bagatelle or work of art<br/>All are tales of human failing<br/>All are tales of love at heart</p><p>"Every Story is a Love Story"<br/>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_XHTzc6lag</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. More Than Men Believe

**Author's Note:**

> Tags, warnings, &c updated as the mood strikes. Rating unlikely to go above T, I used to be a tech writer and whenever I try to write smut it sounds like an instruction manual for a microwave.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The man was a maddening set of contradictions, but Dorian began to realize that day alongside the revelation of the Inquisitor’s naked upper body that the laughter masked an almost frightening intensity.

Dorian Pavus (recently of Minrathous) wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting of the leader of the Inquisition, but it wasn’t this.  Someone bearded, perhaps.  Definitely someone sober and stoic and, well, Andrastian.  Blackwall, with his complete lack of humor, was the very image of someone leading an upstart band of religious fanatics.  If he’d met the Inquisition party without introduction, he would in fact have pegged the dour Warden as the mysterious Herald of Andraste.

From  his spot at the library window Dorian could look down into the courtyard and see what he’d gotten instead.  The slim, utterly unremarkable elf who led the Inquisition was practicing archery with some recruits and laughing at his own inability to hit the target.  The recruits joined in without a hint of nervousness, turning their faces to the Inquisitor like flowers following the sun.  As Dorian watched, the man pulled back the bowstring again and this time the arrow hit one of the targets.  The one next to the target he was facing.  Weren’t elves supposed to be good with bows?

It was clear the Inquisition soldiers loved their laughing, archery-impaired leader.  On the return to Haven from Redcliffe the senior members of the movement might have argued and second-guessed, but coming through the gates of Haven the soldiers, workers, and pilgrims had crowded close.  Saeth had smiled despite his fatigue, greeted those he knew by name, reached out his hands to pat a shoulder or ruffle the hair of a child, and slowed his step to give everyone a chance.  And possibly he’d been delaying because he’d known what was waiting at the chantry, where Cassandra and Cullen began chastising him for offering the rebel mages anything other than abject servitude.

So nondescript, this elf.  Brown hair, brown eyes, skin tanned and roughened by the weather.  Only the outlandish tattoos scrawled across his face made him stand out.  Even his eyelids were tattooed black, which must have been painful.  Dorian wondered idly if they were a fashion choice.

If you hadn’t seen the Inquisitor face down an army, an archdemon, and a darkspawn magister, you wouldn’t believe he even could.  But Dorian had been there, had seen his face when the dragon made its first pass, had watched the small man will himself to be large enough to meet this new thing and overcome it.  There was an undeniable brightness to Saeth, but that night in Haven it had become a flame and blazed in defiance.  Dorian still didn’t know how that slender body had managed to contain it.

A week later Saeth was bloodied but laughing after a fight with one bandit archer had become a pitched battle that included four more archers, two swordsmen, one heavy infantrymen, and a pair of bears who had been attracted by the commotion.  Dorian watched, mystified, as  Saeth submitted to rough field first aid from Iron Bull, laughter still dancing in his eyes. “The universe,” he’d declared, “has no sense of proportion.” Dorian hadn’t been able to come up with a response, knowing at least one of the wounds the Qunari was cleaning had happened when Saeth lunged between the mage and a sword. Dorian’s barrier would have been a second too late if the elf hadn’t been there, grunting from the blow that got through his guard before slamming his shield into the bandit’s face, over and over, until there was nothing there but an unrecognizable ruin.

If he were honest with himself, he’d admit that the fact that the Inquisitor was shirtless under Bull’s enormous hands was also somewhat—no, very--distracting.  It was an epiphany that so much lean, wiry muscle could fit on a frame that small, but it did explain Saeth’s ability to scale nearly sheer cliffs while wearing armor.

The man was a maddening set of contradictions, but Dorian began to realize that day alongside the revelation of the Inquisitor’s naked upper body that the laughter masked an almost frightening intensity.  Iron Bull’s methodical, skilled fighting might be the dependable bulwark, but Saeth flung himself into battle with a grand disregard for danger, seeming to try to fling his sword, shield, and body between the entire world and the threat that hung over it.  He went skidding down scree-covered slopes into battle, yelling something incomprehensible in the slippery elven language he spoke.  What was one pariah Tevinter mage to do but follow along at his heels and try his damndest to keep the man alive?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title is from "The Song of Quoodle" by G. K. Chesterton Find it here: http://www.famousliteraryworks.com/chesterton_the_song_of_quoodle.htm


	2. Laughter is Immeasurable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Left entirely without godly help, Saeth could only mutter, “Please don’t let this be one more weird thing” and hope some kind supernatural entity was listening.

Of the four people who had tried to sum up Saeth’s post-Conclave life, the winner for truth and accuracy had to be Varric.  “Everything that happens to you is weird,” the dwarf had said in the dark and corrupted future they were trying to prevent.  It was, Saeth reflected, completely indisputable.  As a motto, it definitely beat the people trying to foist a tale of Andrastian revelation onto him.  While he sympathized with their desire to find some peace and meaning in the disaster at the Conclave, Saeth wished people would stop trying to force him to be their Chosen Savior.  For one thing, the role seemed dreadfully serious, and honestly, well, Varric was right.  Idly Saeth wondered if he could get “everything that happened to the Herald was weird” into the Canticle that some cleric would probably write if they won.

Currently, however, he was pretty sure he was being weird rather than having weirdness inflicted on him.  Saeth was trying to work up the nerve to go and talk to Dorian, since until very recently they’d been too pressed by matters of immediate survival for casual chats.  And he’d been wanting a casual chat with the Tevinter mage since they met in Redcliffe’s chantry, when his quip about not having gotten the magister trying to kill him anything was met with Dorian’s quick, “Send him a fruit basket.”  The man’s rich, honeyed voice and handsome face had already been distracting Saeth.  Adding a sense of humor onto that was the universe taking unfair advantage.

Not one single soul had joked with him since he’d decided he might as well stay with the Inquisition and have a go at saving the world.  They might laugh when he tried to lighten the mood, but mostly they just turned deadly serious and advised him to cling to his sense of humor afterward.  Saeth desperately missed the banter with his fellow hunters, lounging around a fire on a cool evening, passing a bottle and just…laughing with each other.  Unfortunately that meant that if his nebulous hopes panned out, the Canticle of the Herald would also include, “Dorian had him at ‘fruit basket’.”

Up here among Leliana’s crates and boxes and birds and messengers, there was one place where someone could sit unseen and look down into the library at the nook the mage usually occupied.  Saeth was waiting, patiently, for Dorian to wander into it so he could go down and…and what?   _Just talk to the man_ , he scolded himself.   _You know almost nothing about him, there’s no point in even_  having  _hopes_.  Saeth was perfectly familiar with the maddening, gnawing hollowness in the chest that went with discovering that beautiful men with velvet voices were never going to be interested in him  _that_  way.  Better to find out soon, surely, and get it over with one way or another.  Yank the arrowhead making his heart skip and hitch around the man and let the wound heal so there could be honest friendship, or (did he even dare let himself hope?) transmute it into something less painful than uncertainty.

Dorian’s voice, casually wishing Solas a good morning, echoed up through the rotunda.  Then his light footstep sounded on the stone stairs, and then finally he arrived in Saeth’ field of vision.  Minus the strange half-cloak he wore when they traveled, one of Dorian’s shoulders was exposed.  Saeth found it unfairly distracting, and had a sinking feeling that Dorian  _knew._ Standing and stretching, he caught Leliana watching him with a glint of laughter in her eyes.  She hadn’t said a word about him lurking up here for three days trying to gather his courage, though, so he supposed he couldn’t complain about her having a quiet laugh at his expense.

Talk to Dorian, that’s what he was going to do.  Just…talk.  Ask him about where he was from, maybe, the only things Saeth knew about Tevinter were horrible stories of magisters smeared with the blood of elven slaves.  There had to be more to the place than that, surely.  He straightened his tunic, paused to brush some dust from his trousers, and sternly ordered his heart to stop thumping like it had that time it turned out he established a camp right next to a high dragon’s hunting grounds.   _Dorian is only_ figuratively  _as dangerous as a dragon_ , he told himself.  His rebellious heart refused to listen, though, instead replaying the Infamous Fruit Basket Moment, complete with lingering attention to the way Dorian’s lips had curved beneath his carefully groomed mustache and the delicate creases at the corners of his laughing eyes.

Well, shit.  Not one of the Creators seemed like the patron of hunters living in a crowd of very religious shemlen and trying not to make fools of themselves in front of devastatingly attractive mages.  Neither did the Maker or Andraste seem like the sort of divinities to be sympathetic to his situation.  Left entirely without godly help, Saeth could only mutter, “Please don’t let this be one more weird thing” and hope some kind supernatural entity was listening.  He took a deep breath, and started down the stairs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should probably start noting the poems I take titles from. This one is from "Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front" by Wendell Berry. Find it here: http://www.context.org/iclib/ic30/berry/


	3. The Past Is Never Dead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh Creators, had he been that wrong? But then of course he had been, this was a shem, a shem from Tevinter of all places and he knew little about shemlen and less about Tevinter...

 Looking back, Saeth thought, he should have known to be suspicious when Mother Giselle left her self-appointed post in the garden and hunted him down in the main hall. But she'd never been anything but honorable and supportive, so he was completely unready for either the way her voice dripped disdain when she spoke of Dorian, or the fact that she apparently expected Saeth to go along with some horrible plot to trick Dorian into a family reunion.

Saeth wasn't familiar with the problems of families gone wrong, and Dorian had been vague when speaking of why he left Tevinter. Dishonesty and trickery, on the other hand, were no way to treat a friend. Whatever Dorian's reasons, Saeth trusted him. Whatever Dorian was to him, "friend" was definitely on the list. Showing him the letter was the only thing to do.

***

Three facts about the Inquisitor had become legend in Skyhold, Varric reflected. One, it was incredibly difficult to get him to wear shoes. He had finally caved in to Josephine and consented to wear the clothes she provided, but unless she cornered him he went barefoot. Two, he stopped and spoke to everyone who spoke to him. This occasionally caused problems when an Orlesian noble waiting for a meeting saw it delayed so the Inquisitor could chat with the person sweeping the great hall. Three, the man just didn't get angry. Determined, yes. Stubborn, definitely. Prone to finding humor in situations where it wasn't appropriate, that too. But angry? Never.

So when the door to Redcliffe's pub slammed open so hard it hit the wall, Varric was startled. Even Iron Bull raised an eyebrow, and his calm was as legendary as the Inquisitor's. Varric opened his mouth to ask Dorian how the meeting with his father had gone, and was silenced by the expression on the elf's face.

The man deliberately positioned himself between Dorian and the world, hands flexing. His tense stance was the same one he fell into before a fight. Varric knew him well enough to suspect he was wishing he could hit something. Or someone.

The Inquisitor tilted his head toward their mounts. Varric could take a hint. He wasn't going to get any more of this story than he could read in the bodies of the two men, and body language was Bull's strength.

It was a long, quiet trip back to Skyhold.

***

"Are you all right?" Startled by the compassion in that quiet question (when was the last time someone had asked, let alone meant it) Dorian blurted out the truth. "No. Not really."

It could only be downhill from there, he thought, and gave up any thought of his usual posturing. What good would his carefully built facade even do, faced with the man who'd stood beside him in that grotty little tavern while he raged at his father? In Tevinter, that scene would have been the end of whatever camaraderie they'd built.

That bitter knowledge added despair to fatigue, weighted him down with sorrow. Dorian wondered if he could bear to stay here in Skyhold when Saeth's eyes turned cold. He knew he couldn't bear waiting for that moment. Let the break be clean. He reached for it. "Maker knows what you must think of me now, after that whole display."

***

Being shit at politics was one thing. This was something else entirely. This, maybe, Saeth could do. Deliberately lowering his voice, he stepped forward into Dorian's personal space. "I don't think any less of you. More, if possible." It wasn't possible, the other man had been on Saeth's mind for weeks. No need to mention that, really. Dorian's voice was warm and rough, almost caressing. "The things you say." His eyes glanced off of Saeth's lips, but then he took a step back.

Oh Creators, had he been that wrong? But then of course he had been, this was a shem, a shem from Tevinter of all places and he knew little about shemlen and less about Tevinter and--wait, Dorian was still talking.

"Sometimes you have to fight for what's in your heart," Dorian said, and something in his eyes made Saeth hope, just a tiny bit, that maybe he wasn't a complete fool after all.

"I agree," Saeth responded, inwardly flinching at the way his brain seemed to totally desert him him, leave him floundering. Except Dorian stepped toward him then and he just had time to think _Tevinter, this will only end BADLY_ and then Dorian's lips were on his and there was no more thinking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "The past is never dead. It's not even past."  
> \--William Faulkner, "Requiem for a Nun"


End file.
